AIBU to think it's time for the NHS to do itself a favour and make WL injections readily available.

Y'all could just stop over eating?

Stop papering over the proverbial cracks and denying those with diabetes their medication.

@smallbluethings there's a lot of videos on YouTube of the side effects and many people talk about it's effect on mental health. Sensible to be cautious for this reason as you say.

OP is ignoring this question. I completely agree with you. I say that as someone who has struggled with their weight and relationship with food my entire adult life. How I would love a magic answer! But there isn't one, unless you are prepared to inject yourself for life. Which I am not.

OP, I really think you are ignoring this question.

What happens when people stop taking the drug?

I would be really interested to hear your answer because this, for me, is the sticking point.

This sounds awful, and as someone who suffers from anxiety it's enough to put me off.

There are cheaper providers MedExpress start at £140

It cost £199 for one month including delivery in cold container

I’ve just ordered it via the doctor online at Superdrug, awaiting confirmation that they are willing for me to have it. You have to fill in a medical questionnaire, giving your GP’s address, plus two photos to verify you are genuine, one on scales, one side view. I am nervous about it! I may not qualify as I have some medical conditions.

@BirdFeederFun if you scroll back you should be able to find my post from earlier on this thread. My bmi was 44 and I am now down to bmi of 28 through diet and incredibly minimal exercise. Seriously minimal exercise due to disability.
No injections, no surgery, no medical interventions. Utter fear drove me to it if I'm honest but I am so glad it did. We can either sit around looking at statistics and hoping someone comes along to do it for us, or we can start the changes immediately and go from there. It is up to us whether we like that fact or not. I don't say that to be horrible or mean at all, I have been where you are after all. I say it because it's truth. You are capable so prove it to yourself. Eight months from now you could be so far from where you are, you can reach "just obese" with a fairly small weight loss, then it's a bit more to reach "overweight" and by then you're well on your way to "healthy weight". Do it! Good luck 🤞

Yes I do x appreciate I am fortunate to be able to afford it

Did you have to pay for the meds? I wish I could access them..

You don’t need to lose that 10 stone though to improve your life. I am morbidly obese and now lost 2 stone on these meds and even that has improved my quality of life quite a bit. You don’t need to aim for perfection. I’ll probably never be a healthy weight. I’m ok with that. Any loss will help improve your health

Yes, 30.5. I don’t want to take it for months. I have cut down on portions and carbohydrates but it is stubborn to shift. Ideally I should lose 2 stone , but 1 stone would be a good kick start.

I agree with you but a lot of people just don't want to hear it.

It's the ones who say "I've done everything, made better food choices, really exercised hard and I've lost no weight". I just don't get that.

I don’t have a moral stance on this ( or skin in the game, pun intended). However, I have looked in an amateur way, at the mechanism by which at least one of these drugs works. They ‘suppress the appetite’ not by some pseudo psychological process, but by lengthening the time that food takes to pass through the gut and be expelled, that is by altering the basic processes of digestion.

That sounds like a recipe to disaster to me.

Are you within the prescribing range? Your BMI needs to be obese > 30 to be prescribed initially. Unless you have other specific health issues then they sometime prescribe to those with a BMI > 27 after a consultation.

It could take one month, it could take 6 or even more. If you only have 1st to lose, even if they prescribed it, I don't think it would be an appropriate or sustainable way to lose just 1st.

The health economics analysis has been done/is being done as part of the NICE assessment process, although worth pointing out that NICE formally only considers costs/benefits to the NHS and PSS, not wider societal benefits such as work productivity.

Difficult enough in itself to assess, I think. Say 4-12 months, depending on how long it took you to titrate to an effective dosage, your starting weight, state of health etc. ETA: maybe also if the "stubborn stone" is for personal reasons or actually puts you in the overweight/obese/morbidly obese category. (Assuming someone isn't already lowest BMI for their height etc. or actually underweight.)

Maintaining that loss might mean you'd need to continue to take the drug (maybe at a lower dosage). Say, another year or 2. Maybe more? It might depend if you're TTC, pregnant etc.

However, someone might have some actual data for you that I haven't seen.

ETA: also may depend if stubborn stone is body fat or lipoedema which doesn't always respond well to weight loss.

I can probably guess which had the longest queue!

It was the same at a food market I was at recently - buddah bowls with bulgar wheat, hummmus, beef/chicken/tofu, pickled cabbage and a chunk of flat bread which was all delicious, fresh and nutritious. And then another stall selling loaded fries. Both were the same price but everyone was queuing up for the fries.

If I just want to lose a stubborn stone, roughly how many injections would I need?

We'd need a health economics team to work out the cost and clinical effectiveness. Together with the Treasury, they'd be able to assess the impact on wider productivity and the economy.

There would be people with (largely treatable) side-effects which the NHS might not necessarily have the capacity to cope with for some time. E.g., gallstones are a common consequence of rapid weight loss and some people will need treatment for that. There will be people with substantial excess skin to be removed because folds of skin can develop extensive fungal infections that need treatment.

There may well still be substantial savings in other areas but they may take a while to play through while the nearer-time side-effects might need treatment far sooner and increase some costs.

On Japan - I am at a food market in London. I have just bought lunch from a Japanese food stall - they were selling modest bowls of sushi rice topped with pickled ginger, wilted bok choi, half a boiled egg and then either strips of lean pork, chicken or tofu.

Next door was an American waffle stand selling massive waffles topped with pulled pork, BBQ sauce, melted cheese, bacon and maple syrup or sweet ones with chocolate, cream, bananas and sugar sprinkles.

@HeySummerWhereAreYou

And frankly, your comment that I am 'lacking in knowledge' about weight struggles, and eating disorders, disgusting - and insulting.

I mean you used the good old 'cut down food and increase exercise' so I based my comment on that. I certain didn't mean to insult you at all but if you make a comment that suggests you don't really have the knowledge then people will assume that you don't.

I don't think I was being rude but I apologise as I do seem to have upset you quite a bit.

We aren't though. We can exercise by taking stairs instead of a lift. Or if we are chair-bound we can do gentle movement exercises at home. I do my exercises at home either just before bed (on my bed, core exercises like sit ups, leg raises etc) or while I'm making a cuppa I might do some arm exercises while the kettle boils. We cannot go down the route of blaming others for our own inability to do exercise